Help with creating a script to make renaming layer objects faster

Question

Hello

As a frequent user of InDesign, I've been finding the limited functionality and slowness to rename objects within a layer a pain. Compared to other Adobe products like Premiere Pro, where you can press the spacebar to easily rename layers, InDesign is slow and painful.

I've reached out to the customer service support many times with no avail to help this issue. I was recently told that "For assistance with exact script, you should post your query on Adobe Support Community, an expert from Adobe Engineering Team should be able to help" so I'm looking for help here.

With some research, I found multiple forums that support the idea that a script can be created to overcome the renaming issue. The scripts allow a batch rename of layers or objects within a layer all at once, so it doesn't need to be done manually.

Here are some links to those forums:

In my case, I would like the objects within a layer to be easily renamed using the script.

In the screenshot below, you can see six objects with the name <One>. I would like the script to rename these layers to:

100

101

102

103

104

105

106

I am not a script writing guru, but can follow instruction well. Please help with this as it's a huge efficiency issue for me, as I can have hundreds of objects which I currently need to rename manually. The renaming of these objects is important as I frequently use buttons for interactive forms, so the "Set Tab Order..." function is crucial. It would be worlds easier if the script could rename these objects for me, so all I need to do is make sure they are placed in the correct order under the Layer.

Hopefully this makes sense, but please let me know if it doesn't as I can answer any required questions.

Please help me! Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Lou

brian_p_dts · Accepted Answer

Renaming layer items just requires a triple click, but,

This will do it to every layer in the document, and only the top level page item in the document (ie won't change name of text frames that are grouped).

If you don't like that, change the first line to :

var docLayers = [app.activeDocuments.layers.itemByName("Layer 1")];

I guess I'm an Adobe Engineering Expert now...

var docLayers = app.activeDocument.layers.everyItem().getElements();
var aLayer, i, j, layerPageItems, numLPIs, count;
for (i = 0; i < docLayers.length; i++) {
   aLayer = docLayers[i];
   layerPageItems = aLayer.pageItems.everyItem().getElements();
   numLPIs = layerPageItems.length;
   count = 100;
   for (j = 0; j < numLPIs; j++) {
       layerPageItems[j].name = count + "";
       count++;
   }
}

You're welcome.

rob day · Answer

The items listed in a Layer are actually page items, so the list could change depending on the current active page. Sould the script handle page items on different pages—like Brian’s script— or would it only target the active page?

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